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Both a riveting account of a life spent pulling off improbable triumphs and a report back from the front of the global-energy and natural-resource wars, The First Billion Is the Hardest tells the story of the remarkable late-life comeback that brought the famed oilman and maverick back from bankruptcy and clinical depression . .

Found Inside: It's a land with a storied history. Even though I've ranched in Roberts County for thirty-five years, many of my neighbors still consider me a newcomer. Their families have lived there since the 1800s . . . " Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "My father said this one winter afternoon following my grandmother's funeral. My grandfather had been dead a number of years, so it seemed an odd time to tell my sister and me that he'd killed a man. Although we were grown and out on our own working, we'd never heard a word about it until that day. Daddy said this--"Pop killed a man once"--said it conversationally, in the same tone of voice he'd been using to discuss the crop land and the Miami, Texas landmarks he remembered . . ." Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "Beneath the ground of his Roberts County, Texas ranch are oil and gas. It was here that the Pickens Plan percolated throughout 2007 and 2008, while he was quail hunting or surveying his vast spread, which he affectionately calls Mesa Vista . . . " Read more Look inside

published 1987

Found Inside: "Recently I mad a survey of the two ponds near our Line. I find that the one near the breaks of Red Deer Creek does not contain a sufficient supply of water to experiment with. The lower pond five miles west of Codman contains plenty of water, and if Goodnight and Taylor do not object,  I should like very much . . . " Read more Look inside

by Laura V Hamner

Found Inside: "... the total of thirty-six votes were turned in from Codman, a Digger supporter. Miami received one hundred eleven votes in the county seat election, and Bennett fifty-seven . . . Read more

published 1976

“A veritable Who’s Who of pioneer cattlemen.” ―Elmer Kelton, from the Foreword John and Mahlon Thatcher were two of the many pioneers looking to begin a new life in the great open spaces of the West ... Together with such legendary figures as Frank Bloom, Henry Cresswell, O. H. Perry Baxter, William Anderson, Burton Mossman, and Mahlon T. Everhart, they created a cattle empire, financing and directing the Bloom Land and Cattle Company, the Diamond A Cattle Company, and the Hatchet Cattle Company. Their herds of cattle, horses, and sheep ranged on some eleven million acres . . . Read more

Found Inside: " I did emerge from the divorce with my Roberts County ranch, which I started in 1971. I sold 4200 acres of it, the original 2B, in 998mostly to put the past in the past. The remaining would be renamed Mesa Vista Ranch . . . " Read more

Found Inside: "WAYSIDE

Several miles north of Pampa, about one hundred feet west o SH 70 in southern Roberts County, sits a small red building. Locals refer to it as the "Red School House," for that was its purpose from 1914 until 1933. The land on . . . " Read more Look inside

William "Billy" Dixon scouted the Texas Panhandle for the Army, hunted buffalo for the train companies, defended the Adobe Walls settlement against Indian attack with his legendary buffalo rifle, and was one of eight civilians in the history of the U.S. to receive the Medal of Honor.

Found Inside: "In returning to camp, we crossed Red Deer about where Miami, Texas now is, and camped at some water-holes. heading northward we soon struck the brakes of Tallahone, and followed the Tallahone down to its mouth . . ." Read more Look inside

When a rainmaker is bludgeoned to death in the pitch-blackness of a colossal dust storm, small-town sheriff Temple Jennings shoulders yet another burden in the hard times of the 1930s Dust Bowl. The killing only magnifies Temple's ongoing troubles: a formidable opponent in the upcoming election, the repugnant burden of enforcing farm foreclosures, and his wife's lingering grief over the loss of their eight-year-old son . . . Read more Look inside

Found Inside: "The classic Clovis interpretations -- that fluted-point-makers were Upper Paleolithic nomads who specialized in big-game hunting and who lived in small and mobile bands -- first appeared in the 1930s, but took clearer shape during the 1940s and early 1950s. Clovis points at first (for example, those from the Miami Texas site ... " Read more Look inside

Resources:

Early Life in Texas County by County

Books about Texas People and Places

Amazing People from Texas County by County